What a sad (and horrible) story. When I talk to people over here about my experiences of the US health system when I lived there I've always said 'I wouldn't want to be there if I didn't have insurance'.
I'm not sure how much exaggeration there is but my father tells stories of being in Houston back in the '50s. He was in the Royal Marines and while his unit were there he was assigned as the liason with the local Police in case any of the Royal Marines got into trouble. According to him he went out on patrol with the local cops and when they came across an accident one of the first things they did was check if a casualty was carrying proof of insurance - which determined which hospital they got sent to (the choice was one of the nice shiny expensive ones or the pretty run-down charity one). As an aside he told me that if the victims were black the Police pretty much didn't even bother stopping.
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